


That One Time Clint Barton maybe turned Tony Stark into a Five-Year-Old

by Ambrosia



Series: When Something Goes Wrong, it's Usually Clint Barton's Fault [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, as usual it's clint's fault, set in the future somewhere cause sam's totally an avenger, trying to get canon to work together is god awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambrosia/pseuds/Ambrosia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Get Cap,” Natasha said, face unusually blank. Which, on a scale of ‘it’s cool she’s about to murder you with just her thighs’ to ‘wow I think we might actually be in trouble’, it was about ‘oh holy god everything’s on fire somebody do something’.  </p><p>Clint was already leaning low and sprinting down the hallway before she had even finished speaking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That One Time Clint Barton maybe turned Tony Stark into a Five-Year-Old

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr wanted baby Steve and Tony, so here I am.  
> [tumblr](http://www.valorious.tumblr.com)

Clint narrowed his eyes and glared at the top of the messy head of hair that was sitting in the common space of Avenger’s tower. His entire posture said that he was completely out of his goddamn element— his shoulders were up, his hands were in fists, his back was against Natasha. “It’s, just, no.” 

Bruce agreed with his sentiment in his own, little-mode way. His glasses were entirely off his face, held loosely in one hand. “It’s not as if,” started Bruce. 

“No, it is,” said Clint. 

“A hallucinogenic?” Bruce suggested. “An alternate reality, wherein he wasn’t born. A clone, that’s a real possibility.” 

Sam shrugged. “Are we sure there isn’t just, like, a couple mini you-know-what’s in the universe?”

Bruce’s sleeves were going to be absolutely frayed and it was only ten o’clock in the morning. 

They hadn’t even had their coffee yet. 

“I. Don’t. Care,” Clint stressed, trying to communicate the absolute hysteria in his voice while keeping the volume down to what would be described as the stomping feet of two hundred baby elephants. “He’s difficult enough to deal with as-is, let alone as a terrible terror!”

Four people shushed him, including Thor. 

Betrayal of the utmost. 

Thor, Bruce, and Phil were all wearing identical frowns of confusion and contemplation. Sam, like Clint, was staring at the terror in question, shoulder to shoulder. Jane was hiding behind Thor— okay, maybe Thor had planted himself firmly between the dark-haired abomination and Jane, but he’d probably never admit it— and Darcy. 

 _Hold up_.

Darcy was gone. 

Clint wheeled himself around, looking for the other dark-haired terror in his life, only to find her sitting cross-legged and seated in front of five-year-old Tony Stark, who was busy with what appeared to be his holotech, simplified to five-year-old capabilities. 

Five people all sucked in a breath and said, “Oh, _no_.” 

Darcy and toddler was _no_ , that was bad, that was just asking for trouble, Darcy was tasers and photographic blackmail material and the utter nonchalance about bodily harm that came standard with the usual university student a week short of finals. 

“Darcy, the thing you are about to do, do not do this thing,” Clint whispered in something that sounded awfully like a squeak. It was too high for his ears to actually hear, but judging by the nods of several people, they managed to hear it. 

“It can’t be that bad,” Sam said. “Right?”

Natasha and Coulson both said, “Panama.” 

Sam paused mid-sentence. “The Panama when it was actually Panama or,” he said, “The Panama where we were really in Nicaragua.”

“Panama,” Clint said numbly, frozen to the spot. 

Sam stepped back slightly to stand behind Thor.

“Hi,” said Darcy. “Sup, boy-kid.” 

Five year old Tony didn’t respond. He looked down at his hands and gave a general gesture of ‘hello’. 

Clint was ninety-five percent sure Phil already had Hill on the line, which mean that Nick Fury was about to gouge his other eye out. 

“I’m Darcy,” Darcy said, spinning whatever object kid-Tony had been playing with. From over where Clint stood it looked like some sort of spherical design. 

Clint was waiting for the ball to drop, for the proverbial precious Stark son to come storming out in a blaze of glory ala that one time in Morocco in true Stark fashion. 

But mini-Stark said absolutely nothing, but ducked his head so that it was closer to his body.

“Get Cap,” Natasha said, face unusually blank. Which, on a scale of ‘it’s cool she’s about to murder you with just her thighs’ to ‘wow I think we might actually be in trouble’, it was about ‘oh holy god everything’s on fire somebody do something’.  

Clint was already leaning low and sprinting down the hallway before she had even finished speaking. 

Cap’s rooms were thirty paces down the hallway and left when the path forked, Clint was there in mere seconds at full-speed.

“Hey, Cap! We’ve got a very big proble—” Clint said, skidding and sliding against the door to change his momentum. “Caaaaaaaaaa…”

A blond, thirty-six pound soaking wet asthmatic was sitting on Steve’s bed, wearing a shirt that was about seven sizes too big for him. 

He couldn’t even do it, he couldn’t even get his brain to kickstart, he just stood there for about twenty seven seconds and turned on his heel and walked right back out, ignoring the confused look on the seven-year-old’s face. 

Clint walked back into the commons with both hands on either side of his head. It was the expression of somebody trying to pull their face off with just their nails but they were pulling to hard. 

The world hated him. 

Fuck the whole world, and fuck this stupid goddamn day. 

Bruce was the first person to notice the ‘I’m going super villain, but don’t let me pick a stupid outfit’ look on his face, so he asked, “Clint?”

“No,” Clint groaned. “I don’t want to talk about it, because if I talk about it, then it’s real and I don’t want to have to deal with it, I don’t want to be here, dealing with this. I’m going back to Lensk.” 

He whirled around and made a mad dash towards an escape, any escape, preferably one of the vents, but he didn’t even make it one step before _someone_ , and he had his suspicions, had him by the collar with her pretty little hands. 

“Что случилось?”

“No, not gonna do it,” Clint said, sliding down onto his shins despite Natasha’s iron grip. “Does not compute, error, system needs immediate shut down, goodbye.” 

Natasha let him sink down the rest of the way as Thor, Mjolnir in hand, went down the hallway where Clint had come from. He could tell without looking that Natasha had eyes on Stark and Lewis. Phil was talking into his earpiece faster than Clint could read his lips. 

“Clint,” Natasha said again. 

“I’ve notified my guys at S.H.I.E.L.D,” said Coulson. “ETA fifteen minutes.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Sam. “Cause Tony reacts so well to guys in suits when he’s not all of forty pounds.”

“Friends,” Thor said. The entire room turned towards him, but Clint just closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable shit-fan showdown, round three, ding! “This young warrior is the Great Steven.” 

Thirty six pounds soaking wet. Asthmatic. Steven Grant Rogers. 

Probably all of seven years old. 

Individually he could deal with them. The Avengers were a competent team. 

“I’m calling Rhodes,” Sam said. 

But both of them?

Universes were going to split.

“Already done, sir,” said JARVIS.

Fury was there within seven minutes, which was a surprising feat, even for him. 

“So let me get this straight,” said Fury. “You all just wake up to find a de-aged, amnesiac, five year old Tony Stark like somethin’ out of Hocus Pocus?” 

“You’re forgetting Rogers, sir,” said Phil. 

They were standing in a circle around the kitchen island like it was Superheroes Anonymous. Darcy, Thor, and JARVIS had both been dispatched to be temporary babysitters. 

Which was not going to end well for anybody, anywhere. 

“What do we do,” Clint asked. “Is there even a protocol with this? We just, what, whap ‘em on the head until they poof back to normal?”

Natasha lined herself against his back again. 

Bruce was frowning. “I could get down to my lab, maybe run some tests, get some samples.” 

“You go anywhere near Steve with a needle and I’m pretty sure he’d pass right through it,” said Sam. “He looks anemic as-is.” 

As if JARVIS had been following Sam’s very visible line of thought, JARVIS said, “His vitals are within the normal range at this time, sir.” 

“Thanks, man,” said Sam told the ceiling.

Fury pinched his nose. “I want all of you to know that I have to special-order customized bottles of tums, now.”

“This could be a form of re-education,” suggested Natasha after a short stretch of silence. “They both show signs of amnesia, they don’t recognize us.”

“Yes,” Jane said. “But that could be achieved without, well, this.”

Coulson spoke up, “No, but I like Romanov’s idea. We could try re-association, get somebody they’re more likely to remember.”

“Well,” Bruce said. “We could call Pepper, for Tony. But for Steve…” 

He trailed off. The entire group looked to Natasha and Sam. Natasha shrugged.

Sam said, “Last I heard, you-know-who was in the ass-end of Siberia.” 

Superheroes Anonymous went silent again. Clint was trying to block out the sounds of Mario Kart going on in the background. It wasn’t easy. 

“So, who are you guys?” asked a small but incredibly direct voice. 

Sam about jumped into Natasha’s arms. 

Steve was sitting on the counter, feet dangling off the countertop. 

Thor stood behind Steve, had probably followed his temporary charge from the other room. Surprising everyone, had a gentle hand with Steve. “We are the Mighty Avengers, friend Steven.” 

Steve, bright eyed, critically looked from Thor, to Natasha, to Sam, to Clint, to Fury, Clint remembering that none of them were wearing their uniforms, not even Thor. 

In fact, they were in ‘slept in and didn’t get out of bed before ten’ mode. 

Except for Bruce, of course. 

“We usually look much better,” Clint promised. “This has kinda been an off day.”

“Oh,” said Steve. “Well, that’s good. You look kinda terrible.” 

Clint looked down. He was still wearing his sweats. “Yeah, well, you try having energy in the morning.” 

He then remembered that Steve, their Steve, was still in the habit of getting up at four in the morning. 

Which was ridiculous, even by ex-military standards. 

Sam broke the silence by pointing to himself and then each of them in turn. “I fly around on some badass wings. He’s a super-powered Thunderer. Black Widow. Clint here can hit a target from eight hundred yards while blind-folded.”

“One-handed,” Clint added, a bit resentfully. 

“What can you do?” Steve asked Bruce. 

“Oh,” Bruce said. Clint thought that he looked a little surprised by the attention. “I’m, uh, in possession of a very green, very misbehaved rabbit.”

Steve tilted his head to one side.

“It’s a really big rabbit,” offered Sam. 

Steve looked like he had built up about a billion questions and was ready to pelt them all with as many as he could while he still had breath in his body; Clint braced for skirting around the whole ‘you were actually given a super-serum and then got frozen for eight decades and then came back to the present and were then transformed into your pre-serum, seven year old self’ schtick. 

Cause that would’ve been fun. 

“You know,” said Natasha. Half the team flinched, because that was her ‘do you _really_ think I’m pretty’ voice and that was never good for anyone involved. “There’s another boy here, around your age. Do you think you’d be up for introducing yourself?”

Steve looked from Natasha to Coulson, ready to put up a fight, or at least an argument, but his curiosity visibly won out on his face as he looked over to where Tony was undoubtedly still playing. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, moving to slide down the countertop using his arms, but he couldn’t support his weight. Clint, the fastest, caught him and put him down. Steven stared at his feet and said, “Thanks.” 

Now that they were looking, Darcy had moved to the other side of the hologram and now had Tony pressed right up against her side like he could somehow fuse with her. Darcy didn’t seem to mind, but was using a game pad on the flatscreen while Tony looked on, fascinated. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Clint. He pointed at Steve and said, “Thirty-six pound asthmatic sarcastic little shit.” He pointed at Tony. “Touch-starved five year old with a prescription-grade abandonment issue.”

Coulson looked pointedly at Fury. 

Fury waited a few seconds but begrudgingly handed over a twenty dollar bill. 

“It does seem a bit,” Bruce offered, “Well, backward.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “I was expecting full-on Stark mode, daddy bought him a billion ponies where’s my macchiato and private jet.”

“And good boy Steve,” said Natasha. 

“So, what d’we do,” asked Sam. “We got any magic masters in our band of misfits?”

Fury crossed his arms. “There are a couple people I could call, if we really need to.”

Coulson put his tablet down. “But you don’t think we’ll need to, sir.”  

“Nah,” said Fury. “I’m thinking that we just let them burn themselves right through whatever the hell this is.” 

He looked with his good eye at each Avenger in turn. “Keep a good eye on em’, though.” 

By the time that Rhodes and Pepper and the S.H.I.E.L.D teams showed up, including Bobbi Morse, of all people, a few hours later; the common room had turned into a tornado of unhealthy snacks. Coulson took one for the team and complained about those, along with a trusty Wii U marathon that included a healthy dose of Netflix. 

And Clint had gotten tired just watching the two of them, expecting that Steve would, at one point, fall over and _die_. 

He’d seen Steve’s pre-serum medical records. 

But they all dispersed, one after another, when it was apparent that the two boys weren’t going to murder each other based on their grown-up personalities. 

Clint wound up leaning over the back of the couch, Natasha over by the window with her feet up. Thor had popcorn in his hair as he dozed on the floor. 

Darcy was already taking a picture for her repertoire. 

“No, seriously,” Clint said, staring at the two sleeping forms in the middle of the floor in the commons. “How’d you do that.” 

Darcy was chewing on a nail while she tapped the camera on her phone, legs crossed opposite him and staring down at the sleeping Avengers, back to their normal ages, more or less. Tony was still holding onto Steve’s shirt, even in sleep. “I gave em a shit-ton of chocolate.”


End file.
